Drone Space Stations

​A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida with a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station on Friday, and its reusable main-stage booster landed itself on an ocean platform in a dramatic spaceflight first.

The liftoff at 4:43 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral marked the resumption of resupply flights by privately owned Space Exploration Technologies for NASA following a launch accident in June 2015 that destroyed a different cargo payload for the space station.

Read More: SpaceX Rocket Explodes Upon Ocean Landing​About 2 and a half minutes after Friday's launch, the main part of the two-stage SpaceX rocket separated, turned around and headed toward a landing platform floating in the Atlantic about 185 miles of Cape Canaveral.